


Thursday Next and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Fic

by drayton



Category: Thursday Next - Jasper Fforde
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 19:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5387786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drayton/pseuds/drayton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place shortly after <em>Lost in a Good Book</em>. Thursday Next has her first encounter with fanfiction, and it's nothing at all like the place from <em>One of Our Thursdays Is Missing.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Thursday Next and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Fic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NYCScribbler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/gifts).



There are parts of my life best not remembered. Not just big things, like my brother's death, but more ordinary ones, such as nearly every day I've spent in BookWorld.

Perhaps you've never heard of BookWorld. If so, you're probably one of those people who assume that light magically happens when you press the switch. In reality, many people work tirelessly behind the scenes to provide the things you take for granted. BookWorld's like that, apart from having nothing to do with reality.

I've had two jobs recently. The one I actually applied for was like most jobs you're familiar with: inadequate pay, nonsensical regulations, superior superiors whose ambition was trumped only by their ignorance, and a handful of colleagues who made it all bearable by despising it as much as I did.

My second job, in BookWorld, has many qualities my first job lacked. People value my work and I respect my superior, which is about all I can reveal without having my sanity questioned.

Oh, very well. Consider the events of last Saturday. The weather had turned wet and blustery, so I'd planned to spend the whole weekend curled up with a hot beverage and a good book. Instead, I'd scarcely finished doing the washing up from breakfast when I received an urgent summons from Miss Havisham.

She was in a state of barely-suppressed agitation when I arrived. “Thank you for coming so promptly. I'm afraid we require your assistance with a rather delicate problem. We've already sent three other Jurisfiction agents to deal with the situation, but none of them have returned, and things are becoming quite alarming.”

“What sort of problem is it?”

“Er… it's rather difficult to describe. Much easier to show than explain.”

I have a well-merited dislike for engaging with things that are difficult to describe. As I followed Miss Havisham through the Great Library, I did a quick mental review of the contents of my insurance policies.

She led me to a part of the Library I'd never seen before. After following a secret passageway, we paused in front of a reinforced metal door covered with hazard signs and labeled, “FicWorld. Absolutely No Re-Entry to BookWorld Via This Door.”

“Is all this security necessary?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. We don't want anyone to wander in by accident.”

I didn't see how anything up to and including a heavily armed assault group could have entered the door by mistake. “How are we going to get out, once we go in?”

“Oh, there's an exit,” Miss Havisham said. “We just don't want things escaping into BookWorld proper.” She consulted a slip of paper before entering an access code. The door opened, and we stepped into a small antechamber with another heavily reinforced door just opposite. “A text buffer,” she explained, as she closed the first door behind her and entered the code for the second one. I'd never seen that level of security before in BookWorld. As the second door swung open, I wondered what sort of terrors lay beyond.

The first thing I saw were rabbits, hopping about everywhere.

“Don't mind the bunnies,” Miss Havisham said, which I didn't, largely because I was so busy minding everything else.

The room we'd just entered was vast. Before me, I saw a giant chasm in the floor. Around it, chaos. There was a crew of workmen armed with hammers, power saws, drills, and blowtorches. As I watched, they casually leapt into the chasm, as if it were something they did every day.

“Fix-it fics,” Miss Havisham explained.

I saw a throng of improbably handsome men clad in various outfits of dubious practicality. Many of the costumes clung to their wearers in a way that made me wonder what sort of fabric had been used. At first, I thought their faces were completely featureless, which filled me with horror until I realized their heads were surrounded by an obscuring mist which made it difficult to discern their appearance. They were mostly standing about in pairs, and I could hear the pair nearest me arguing, “It's my turn!” “No, it's _my_ turn!” before resorting to a game of rock/paper/scissors to sort it out. A tech with a clipboard standing next to them said, “Go on, then; any two of you.”

The next group over was a crowd of women. Physically, their bodies were identical, but their clothing varied greatly. I saw everything from medieval gowns to business wear to space suits to school uniforms to leather cat-suits. All of their faces had perky, competent expressions, as if ready to take over any situation they encountered.

Next to them, I saw a cargo trolley of...?

“Sensories,” Miss Havisham put in. “Mostly smells, tastes, and textures.”

The sensories were amorphous clouds encased in glass bubbles the size of my fist. And in the next trolley over, “Eyeballs?” I asked.

“Orbs,” Havisham corrected. “Only in the most luminous shades, of course.”

Beyond that, stood a gaggle of worried-looking boys and girls on the verge of adolescence, each accompanied by an elderly adult with a kindly expression. “Are you sure this will be all right?” one child asked. “It's your destiny,” his mentor reassured, “and I will be with you until the end. Well, nearly.”

Next, I saw a crew of techs tossing an odd assortment of objects into the chasm: beds, desks, couches, and thick drapery suitable for hiding behind. Also assorted blunt objects, knives, guns, rope, hockey sticks, candelabra, a baby grand piano, dozens of heavy textbooks, and a pallet of professional-grade espresso machines. I saw one tech toss in a fedora tucked inside a cooking pot and gave Miss Havisham a questioning glance.

She shrugged. “Likely another ambiguous request for hard-boiled. And that,” she said, pointing at a group of techs in protective gear cautiously emptying a vat of glowing goo into the chasm, “is trope dope. Anything sticks to it.”

Near the vat of goo, I saw earnest-looking middle-aged men in old-fashioned suits, carrying notepads and seated in chairs atop divans. A crane was lifting them, divan and all, and dropping them into the chasm, one by one.

“Id fic,” Miss Havisham murmured. “We're never quite sure _what_ they want.”

We strolled past a group of people doing breathing exercises. “Take a deep breath,” their instructor said. “Now, hold it... hold it... forget you're holding it... and let it go.”

Next, I saw soldiers in leather harness and men in spandex costumes, some with capes. Many had scars, and generally weren't quite so good-looking as the improbably handsome men I'd first seen, but they still would have given Landen an inferiority complex. Some of them wore heavy rucksacks and haunted expressions.

“Tragic backstories,” Miss Havisham whispered. “It's best not to ask, or they'll never stop whingeing.”

The men milled about uneasily as they waited their turn to jump, and one was asking what “she” would want, this time. “What she always wants,” one of them answered with a doomed expression, before taking the leap into the chasm.

Beside them stood a group of women garbed in black, each wearing a pointy hat and carrying a wand. “No, not _that_ kind of spell checker,” a tech with a clipboard said. There was an audible pop as the witches disappeared and were replaced by schoolmistresses with severe buns and severer expressions. Each of them brandished a fearsome-looking ruler, and the soldiers who hadn't yet jumped edged away from them.

I turned to Miss Havisham in confusion. “All of these people, all these things—you just tip them over the edge? How do you know they'll end up in the proper story?”

“You really haven't been here before, have you?”

I resisted to the urge to say, “And when would that have happened, since no one told me about the place?” and settled for, “What's my mission?”

“We've received reports that something has gone terribly wrong in FicWorld. You'll need to locate and remove the cancer that's destroying it.”

Looking at all of the things waiting to be dumped into the chasm, I wondered how there could have been room for a cancer to develop. I also wondered whether the destruction of FicWorld would be such a bad thing, considering the lengths Jurisfiction had gone to to keep it separated from BookWorld, but an assignment is an assignment.

“So I just… jump in?”

“Yes. It's actually quite safe, but you won't be able to return here via bookjumping, or communicate with me via footnoterphone, so take this,” she said, handing me a wristband. It had a comm unit and an odd-looking compass on it.

“Why can't I bookjump out of FicWorld?”

She squirmed. “FicWorld isn't like BookWorld, so we make every effort to keep the two separate.”

“What's down there?” I asked, glancing toward the chasm. “Apart from the things you've been tossing in?”

“Ficcers,” she whispered. “There are authors down there.”

“Authors? _Here_? How?”

“I told you: FicWorld isn't like BookWorld. We don't know how they keep finding their way in. The most we can do is keep them from affecting the rest of the Great Library.”

“That's what you're afraid of,” I said. “You're concerned that the cancer that's killing FicWorld will jump the text buffer and infect BookWorld.”

“In part,” she admitted. “We have an obligation to protect FicWorld, as one of the descendants of the Oral Tradition, but yes, I'm worried about BookWorld.”

“If I can't bookjump my way out of FicWorld, how am I going to leave?”

“Use the wristband,” she said. “The compass will always direct you to the way out, which will drop you back in your world. There are exit signs if you lose the wristband, but our last operative, Edmunds, reported that some of the signage has been obscured by the growths that are overtaking FicWorld. Good luck.”

There were many things in this room I hadn't seen yet, but no doubt I'd be finding them below, as well. Taking a deep breath, I jumped into the chasm, trusting Miss Havisham's assurance that I wouldn't be leaping to my death.

 

I fell, but it wasn't the normal sort of falling. Instead of plummeting, it was more of a fast downward float, and I landed on my feet without trouble. I looked up immediately, to make sure I wasn't about to play host to a falling piano, but couldn't see any objects in the air above me. Curious. Somehow or other, things must be getting directed to the correct places on the way down. Perhaps FicWorld wasn't as haphazardly constructed as I'd assumed.

I looked about and saw that I'd landed in a small, circular room with a door resembling the heavy metal doors I'd seen above, but this one had no keypad for entering a code. The door opened easily, and I found myself in a text buffer. Out of curiosity, I tried to exit through the door I'd just entered, but it was shut fast. No way to go but forward.

Given the chaos I'd seen above, I wasn't sure what to expect of FicWorld, but as I exited the buffer, I stepped into an ordinary hallway of the sort I'd seen in countless office buildings. The only thing notable about it was a large number of black lesions covering the floor and creeping up the walls. I chose a direction and set off in search of information and Jurisfiction agents.

By opening a few doors at random, I soon realized that FicWorld, or at least this part of it, consisted of rooms where fics were being enacted. The doors were opaque and mostly labeled with “WIP” or the names of unfamiliar characters, which made opening them something of a hazardous proposition. The first time I opened a door to peek inside, I withdrew quickly as a bullet shot past me. Cautiously trying the next few doors told me that I was in an area dedicated to crime stories. I tried to interview some of the characters, but they were all too busy being perpetrators or victims.

After witnessing a number of shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings, and bombings, I reached a series of rooms carpeted with an odd fluffy substance. I questioned the inhabitants of several such rooms, but no one was able to provide any useful information.

“I'm terribly sorry,” one young man said, while lovingly tending an evergreen tree, “but we're incapable of revealing any useful information. We've been written that way.”

“Why?”

“This is a romance,” he patiently explained. “If we were capable of communicating effectively, the plot would fall apart completely.”

Five doors down from that room, I noticed that the far end of the hallway was filling with mist, or was that smoke seeping underneath several doors? I rushed ahead, wondering if the building were on fire, and bumped into two improbably handsome men coming out of a side hallway.

“Thursday Next, Jurisfiction,” I said, flashing my credentials, even though I was uncertain what weight they held in FicWorld. “Clear the way, please; I believe there's a fire.”

The men looked at me, and then at the doors ahead. One of them said, “That's not a fire. It's just steam. It's like that all the time.”

“Your names, please,” I said.

“We don't have names,” the second man said. “We're just 'the taller man' or 'the blonder man' or such.”

“But what if there are two 'taller men'?”

The first man considered the question, then said, “Then I suppose we have 'the taller man' and 'the other taller man'.”

By now, we'd reached one of the steaming doors, cryptically labeled with a song lyric. The second man opened the door, then turned to me. “Please excuse us; we have work to do. You can come in and watch if you'd like, but you might not want to.”

Beyond the door were smells and sounds I couldn't have described even with the help of a detailed inventory of the sensories. I took a peek, which became a gawk, which became a plan to have a detailed personal chat with Landen about some ideas I'd  had, just as soon as he was alive again. I made a hasty retreat when I sensed myself nearing the point where I wanted to have that personal chat with the taller blonder younger man.

Farther down the hall, I encountered a series of rooms populated by women whose measurements, gravity-defying figures, and costumes indicated they were female counterparts to the improbably handsome men I'd just seen. As in most of the other steam-filled rooms I'd dared to investigate, the furnishings and props told me I'd missed seeing a great deal on the delivery platform above.

After traversing a seemingly endless area full of steaming rooms populated by various combinations of men, women, robots, and assorted creatures, I chanced upon a room containing a coffee shop. Grateful for an excuse to sit down for a few minutes, I ordered some coffee, took a sip, and promptly spat it out. “This is awful!”

“Oh, is it?” said the man who'd served me. “Terribly sorry; I'd no idea. I never actually drink the stuff; I just flirt with people or bemoan the tragedy of my life.”

“What's tragic about your life, apart from the coffee?”

“I can't shake the niggling feeling that I should be something else, something much more... powerful.”

I questioned him about the lesions, and received a complaint about the toxic effects of fics about college students. An hour later, when I'd run out of coffee shops to query, I encountered my first college fic, and the twenty-seven-year-old freshman complained about coffee shop fics.

After visiting several college fics, I opened a door and then shut it again quickly before the terrifying spurt of dragon flame reached me. Oddly enough, I could hear someone cheering inside the room, so I opened the door and saw a proud wizard, a stunned student, and a very surprised-looking eggplant with wings, whose belches resembled the pilot light on my cooker.

“I told you you could do it!” the wizard exclaimed.

When I asked him about the lesions on the walls, the wizard said, “Curious things. Definitely not a spell gone awry. I believe the authors must be responsible.”

“Do you know where the authors are?”

“Follow the signs to the Writer's Warren.”

“I haven't seen any signs like that.”

“They're at the end of most corridors. Perhaps the black spots are covering them.”

I thanked him, and left. At the end of the corridor, there did seem to be an unusually thick concentration of lesions at eye level. I was reluctant to touch one with my bare hand, so I took off my sweater, wrapped it around my hand, and scraped.

The lesion gave way with a squelching sound. Underneath, there was indeed a sign directing me to the Writer's Warren. I uncovered and followed a series of similar signs, thinking that the wizard must be right: if there were authors down here, they should be able to shed some light on the situation.

The Warren proved to be a maze of rooms of every description. There were tiny rooms where authors toiled alone, and libraries and coffee shops where many authors labored side by side in silence, apparently oblivious to the presence of their companions. There were minuscule chilly garrets, complete with meager fires and views of an overcast sky, whose inhabitants were extremely put out that anyone should interrupt them while they were suffering for their art. There was a room with violently orange shag carpet on the walls and ceiling, as well as the floor, where I forbore to mention that writing while under the influence is a misdemeanor offense, punishable by removal of writing materials for no less than seventy-two hours. There were bedrooms and sitting rooms and business offices and school dormitories and basements and kitchens with authors in them. The only thing all of those rooms had in common was that no one wanted to speak to me.

Most, but not all, of the authors were female, and many were young, but there were also several gray-haired women tapping away earnestly. Although most of them were using computers, I saw some using typewriters and some writing by hand, and I passed one frustrated woman frowning at her mobile while saying, “No. No! I hate you, auto-correct! It's _tongues_ , not tongs. Who wants to read about fighting salad utensils?”

I had nearly run out of warren to explore when I saw a figure in a Jurisfiction uniform huddled over a computer. “Edmunds?” I said. “When was the last time you reported in?”

Edmunds looked up at me vaguely, as if trying to recall whether she knew me. “Yesterday, I think. Or perhaps it was last week. I really must finish this,” she said, turning back to her computer.

“You really must explain to me what's going on. What have you learned about these lesions?”

“They're getting bigger,” she said vaguely, without looking away from her screen.

“You told Havisham they were the cancer that's destroying FicWorld.”

“Did I? Yes, I suppose I did. And then I got rather busy with this. But before I started my masterpiece, I went round FicWorld, trying to find the source of the growths.”

“And?”

“No one knows. Or everyone knows, but they all insist someone else is the cancer that's destroying FicWorld. Many believe the cancer will disappear when all our divisions are erased, which will only happen when the One Fic To Rule Them All is written.”

“Hasn't it already been written?” I asked, thinking of some of the rooms I'd encountered.

“Oh, no, that was actually something decent that a bunch of philistines are defiling, two corridors over. The One Fic is supposed to be bad. So bad it's unthinkable. So bad that all the writers in FicWorld will, for one shining moment, agree on something: that the One Fic is utter crap. Do you mind? I was just getting to the sexy bits.”

Edmunds was more helpful than anyone else I'd met in FicWorld, but she'd clearly been drawn into its spell. It actually looked like fun, and I did have a few thoughts about one of the steamy rooms that would be ideal for…

I gave myself a mental shake, realizing that Edmunds wasn't the only Jurisfiction agent susceptible to FicWorld. I wondered what had become of the other two agents and vaguely hoped they hadn't gone into a room with dragons. The only promising lead thus far was Edmunds' mention of the One Fic, but I'd need help to carry out my plan. Lots of help, and quickly. Just watching Edmunds work made me itch to take out my mobile and…

With a great effort of will, I put my mobile back in my pocket and quickly left the room. To my relief, it was easier to ignore the siren song of FicWorld while staring at a blank wall in an empty corridor. Before my thoughts could wander again, I contacted Miss Havisham and explained my situation.

“I'll send some Mary Sues down to you straight away,” she said crisply.

“Will they be immune to the effects of FicWorld?” I asked, while wondering what a Mary Sue was. I thought I'd known all the categories of Jurisfiction agents. Had Miss Havisham been keeping something else from me?

“Definitely. They're designed to be more capable than everyone around them. Will a dozen do you?”

“Perhaps you'd better make it twenty,” I suggested.

Within minutes, a troupe of identical young women arrived, wearing Jurisfiction uniforms bearing trainee insignia. I recognized them at once by their perky expressions. They'd been one of the first groups I'd seen waiting their turn, next to the chasm.

I explained the situation to the Perkies and sent them off to canvass FicWorld and bring me back the worst of the worst. After they'd gone, I realized how weary I was, so I stuck my head back into Edmund's room.

“Any chance of getting some tea round here? I tried one of the coffee shops, but their coffee was abysmal.”

“Three corridors over, second door on the right,” Edmunds replied. “It's a British whodunit where nothing much happens, but the tea and biscuits are first-rate. Don't mind the body in the library. No one else does.”

 

I felt much revived after having two cups of tea and some excellent biscuits. After being ejected from the whodunit for proving the murder was logically impossible, I made my way to a large, deserted auditorium on the edge of the Warren and informed the Perkies of my whereabouts. By now, the lesions nearly covered the floor and walls and had begun to encroach on the ceiling. The Perkies arrived as I resolutely put my mobile back in my pocket for the seventh time.

“We've got it,” said Perky One, waving a stack of index cards. “It took us a while to put the bits together in a way that made sense. Shall I begin reading?”

Before I could say anything, a lesion partially detached from the wall, whipped itself around Perky One's ankles, and yanked. Perky One went sprawling, and the cards spilled everywhere.

“Oh, no!” wailed a chorus of Perkies, but I said, “Never mind. Pick them up. I'm sure we can create something atrocious out of whatever you find. It's the One Fic. It should be awful no matter which order it's in.”

I pushed the master intercom for FicWorld and said, “Attention! Attention, please. The One Fic is about to be read in the auditorium. Your attendance is greatly appreciated.”

Perky One began collecting and reordering the cards, while the rest of the Perkies formed a protective ring around her. The lesions twitched resentfully, but kept their distance. Several minutes passed, but only two sleepy-looking authors appeared.

“No one else is going to come,” one of the Perkies said. “They've all got Important Writing to do.”

“But it doesn't matter,” Perky One said brightly. “We can handle it.”

I thought for a moment, then used the master intercom again. “Attention, please. There will no need for you to attend the reading of the One Fic. I have several Mary Sues at hand, who can easily replace you in the judging of the One Fic.”

Within five minutes, the auditorium was filled to capacity with Perkies, spell checkers, and resentful-looking authors. “This had better be bad,” one of them said.

I took the stack of cards from Perky One, cleared my throat, and began reading. “It was a stark and dormy night.”

“Looks like someone skipped the beta-reader,” someone said with a sneer.

“No,” I countered. “This story begins with two young women arguing about how to decorate their barren freshman dorm room. There must be several paragraphs of curtain shopping coming up.”

“That's hideous,” one of the authors said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lesions shudder. “Yes, it is,” I agreed. Flipping through the cards, I hastily improvised the dullest shopping trip imaginable, interspersed with ham-fisted and leaden attempts at romantic flirting.

“No one would ever say that,” another author exclaimed. I winced inwardly, as my account had been based on one of my more romantic outings with Landen, but I noticed that the lesions were definitely receding.

“Well, they did,” I said, “and then they return to their dorm room, with their new curtains, throw pillows, and a tin of Danish butter cookies to,” I consulted another index card, “create a sex dungeon.”

“With _butter cookies_?” an author said incredulously. I remembered her from the room with carpet on the ceilings. “That isn't sexy. All they do is crumble to pieces without tasting like much of anything. What about bananas? Or pancakes.”

“Pancakes aren't sexy,” said a confused-looking Perky.

“Depends on how you serve them,” the author replied, and several other people grimaced.

“Why did you change to present tense?” a spell checker asked.

“And who wants curtains for a sex dungeon?” said a red-nosed author I'd seen in one of the garrets. “It would be much hotter to leave the windows uncovered, so people outside could watch. This fic is _terrible_.”

Several lesions dropped off the wall and withered into slightly smoking puddles.

One of the Perkies suggested, “Maybe you could use the butter cookies like treats? For special doggy tricks?”

There was a thoughtful murmur and the lesions began growing again. I hastily pulled another index card and said, “But their night of fun is sidetracked by an unwelcome visitor, another student who destroys their festive mood..”

“Oh, yeah, there's nothing I like better than a _festive_ orgy,” said one of the authors.

“Tinsel bondage,” someone else muttered dreamily.

“Who _destroys_ their festive mood,” I repeated, “by sitting there all evening, utterly failing to notice their sexy, sexy underwear...”

“ _What_ sexy underwear?” a spell checker asked.

“It must come free with every tin of butter cookies,” a sour-faced author replied.

“ _Failing_ to notice their sexy, sexy underwear because he's too busy bemoaning the fact that he has hooks for hands.”

“No!” several authors shrieked. “Get him out of there!”

“You've heard this bit before?” I asked innocently.

“Yes, and it's horrible. You're supposed to steal from the best, not the worst! Get rid of it! Kill it with fire!”

The remaining lesions began to whimper, but my audience was growing restless. I flipped through the index cards and selected another one. “So, the police arrive to arrest the student with hooks for hands...”

“For what?” someone asked.

“Appearing in this shitty fic,” suggested the person next to him.

“And the girls in their sexy, sexy underwear discover that they're both secretly superheroes who have laid down the burden of their powers in favor of becoming Psychology majors, in an effort to understand their tragic, tragic lives.”

“Yeah, being afflicted by repeated adjectives is a bitch,” someone said, over the sound of fake snoring. The lesions had shrunk to tiny dots no larger than the head of a pin.

“And then they woke up and realized it had all been a dream, and that they were late for their shift at the coffee shop,” I concluded triumphantly.

“That was IT?” three people said simultaneously. “You interrupted my writing for that crap?!”

I smiled at them beatifically. My time in FicWorld was nearly done, so I could afford to be saintly. “Thanks to your combined efforts, the cancer that was destroying fandom has been eradicated. You may now resume your regular activity, which will doubtless lead to its recreation.”

“It's not _my_ fic that's the problem,” several people said, as they slunk out the door.

One of the authors sidled up to me as the others were leaving. “I have a question,” she said, taking out a pen. “Which brand of butter cookies comes with sexy, sexy underwear?”


End file.
